#*pounds table*

[grimalkinscribbles]

Gas station bloodsucker

[abeautifulblog]

I have strong feelings about Hob Gadling and his girlfriend Peggy who is sometimes his boyfriend Jim

(aka, A Rundown On How Hob Is Also Canonically A Bit Queer Or At Least Queer-Adjacent)

So Hob is only in a handful of issues of The Sandman. His introductory issue, “Men of Good Fortune,” is basically identical to episode 6 of the show, with most of the dialogue lifted verbatim. (Including “It is a poor thing to enslave one’s fellow man.” That was not inserted for 2020s wokeness points, it’s been there all along.)

(The only change is that the comics were set contemporaneously, in the late eighties/early nineties, so Dream didn’t miss their 20th century appointment. But oh man that wound up working so well—because in the comics, they did still have that fight in 1889, but it hits so much harder then when Dream doesn’t show in 1989.)

Anyway, another Hob appearance is the issue “Hob’s Leviathan,” in which the viewpoint character is a cabin boy named Jim, born in 1899 who ran away to sea when he was thirteen, and a few years later finds himself assigned to be the erstwhile manservant for a passenger named Robert Gadling. Some random stuff happens—

(Including a part where a guy is expounding on HOW FICKLE WOMEN ARE, EH?, to which Hob is like, Mate—humans are fickle, and men tend to get more opportunities than women to misbehave.

Hob is Not Here for your misogynistic bullshit.)

—and then in the end it comes out that Jim used to be Peggy before they ran off to sea. It’s actually a scene that makes me wince a bit, because Mr. Neilman is a bonafide ally, but he is also occasionally very cishet and this was one of those times. Sir, trans people don’t find it cool or cute when someone casually reveals that they clocked them from the get-go, and then asks for their “real” name. >_<

But!

Aside from that hand-of-the-author faux pas, Hob is super chill with the whole gender thing. Like, he says to Jim, verbatim,

“You are not the first, nor even the fiftieth such person I have met.”

So yeah. Hob? Said trans rights in 1914.

~~

It’s often impossible to judge whether a particular historical person was a cis-but-opportunistic crossdresser, or what we today would consider trans, or genderqueer, or what. But that issue ends with Jim telling the story to a bunch of weird castaways after he’s been shipwrecked at the end of the world, and affirming that Jim is the name he wants to be called by, at least at that point. So clearly his gender choices are not entirely career-related.

(For lack of information on how Jim|Peggy self-identifies over the course of their life, I’m just going to use male pronouns when he’s Jim and female pronouns when she’s Peggy.)

~~

Because apparently she did go back to being Peggy at some point, and she and Hob met again and became romantically involved—though you only find this out in a comic set in the nineties, when he’s just buried yet another love (one that he’d had too briefly and lost too soon), saying that she was the first person he’d let himself love since Peggy.

(There is also allegedly an issue with Hob and Peggy in the London Blitz, but I have yet to track that one down, so I cannot speak to it. But if she died in the Blitz, that means he spent fifty years mourning her.)

~~

So there you have it! One of the great loves of Hob Gadling’s life was an AFAB person who was living/passing as male when he met them. Full stop. That’s canon. :)

I think that’s pretty fuckin’ cool, and I hope that fic writers setting their Hob stories in the 1930s/1940s will include Jim|Peggy, living their best genderqueer life, and make “Jim|Peggy (The Sandman)” a canonized character tag on AO3.

[ugh-tsumu]

My gay friend posted a topless picture of him and I confidently complimented him in the chats because duh, no feelings he's gay-

He went "Thank you, Leilei"

[outofcontextstuff]

[image ID: screenshot of a discord message from gorilla in a baby romper that reads: (pounds table) I want my 12 apostles dating sim]

[chipper-smol]

Another small assortment of Lars doodles

[brine-in-my-eyes]

listening to Ciao Papa again and oh would you look at that *starts ugly crying*

[ugh-tsumu]

Lord, I am so gay for this person. I wish they are lesbian or bisexual

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

"the antis and larries were manipulated. to fight, to create momentum on the fandom" You manipulated yourselves, but you still can't bring yourselves to accept it. The fact that even today you think that Harry and Louis liking a band or a song that happens to feature the word 'Larry' is evidence of them manipulating you just shows how far you'll go to deflect responsibility from yourself. You chose this. You seek it out.

You’re right, anon. Industry would never! Now that you pointed it out, I can finally renounce it. Goodbye, conspiracy life. I shall miss you.